


Sun Doesn't Shine Less on You

by Arithanas



Category: I pirati della Malesia | The Pirates of Malaysia - Emilio Salgari
Genre: Asexual!Yanez, Jealousy, Managing metamours is hard work, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-23 17:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7473801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithanas/pseuds/Arithanas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandokan found his life had become more complicated than the life of a regular married man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sun Doesn't Shine Less on You

The day had been too hot for doing anything else than to rest on the shadow. Sandokan wiped some fugitive strands of hair from his forehead and approached the window. The wind was not blowing, a hurricane was approaching. He could feel it in his bones.

On his knees, he dipped his hand on the barrel of rainwater and inhaled a palm full of liquid to ease dryness of his nose. If Sandokan was having a bad time, he dreaded to imagine how Yanez was doing. A quick look at the bed reassured him that his brother didn’t need him at the moment. He was sleeping the fever away. Sandokan cupped his hands and splashed tepid water on his face. With closed eyes, he enjoyed the freshness.

“ _ Caralho! _”

Yanez’s voice sounded outraged and Sandokan sprang to his feet in a second, but there was not much he could do. Yanez was sat by the side of the bed. All signs made evident he tried to get hold of the pitcher of water next to his bed. By the way his hand clutched his side, he pulled his wound.

“I’m still here, brother.”

“I’m still not a cripple!” Yanez groaned between clenched teeth.

Sandokan smiled. His brother was a restless man and his very own nature was conspiring against his recovery. Without a word, he took the pitcher and poured Yanez a glass of water.

Yanez mumbled his gratitude and drained the glass before extending it again. Sandokan nodded and poured another measure. The chances of Yanez having a parched throat were monumental. His sharp eyes noticed the trickle of blood and liquid coming from the wound.

“Do you want more?”

Yanez shook his head and let it hang. Sandokan knew that fever and headache usually come together. His hand rested on Yanez’s side and rubbed the neck

“You have some healing to do. To bed with you!”

Yanez whimpered. To move into that big bed was asking for a lot of unavoidable pain.

“Easy, brother,” Sandokan said and passed his arm under Yanez’s armpit to help him settle on the pillows.

Yanez grunted and allowed his brother to help. All the time he muttered a volley of words in a language that Sandokan couldn’t recognize. He figured out they were a string of curses addressed to his wound.

“You are still hot,” Sandokan stated once Yanez settled his weight on the bed.

“I think the wound is getting worse,” Yanez took his brother’s hand and carried it to his side. The skin was burning and the half-healed wound throbbed under Sandokan’s fingers. “My head is heavy.”

The plain statement troubled Sandokan. His brother couldn’t amass enough vigor to toss him an ironic line. Without any word, Sandokan moved to the corner of the room and returned with a bowl half filled with water. Gingerly, he laid his weight on his brother’s side and passed his arm under Yanez’s shoulder. The Portuguese rolled to Sandokan’s chest with a grateful sigh. Sandokan dipped a rag on the water and dragged it over his brother’s flank.

“Are you comfortable?” Sandokan asked after he did some more clumsy attempts to cool his brother.

“As comfortable as I can be with an unusual hole in my body.”

Sandokan laughed at that weak attempt of wit and kissed his brother’s temple: “You’ll survive. You are the mighty White Tiger!”

“Much favor does me the title right now,” Yanez groaned and let his head rest on Sandokan’s chest.

The water dripping in his back made Yanez. Sandokan, without thinking, pulled him closer. It was not the first time Sandokan nursed his brother’s fevers, he knew that only precede a spike. Sandokan suppressed an impotent growl at his failure to spare his brother a trying night.

When Yanez spoke again, the clothes obscured his voice. “Is the little sister amenable to you spending so much time by my side?”

“She’s too busy selecting fabrics for the new longhouse. I’m sure she appreciates to have me otherwise engaged.” Sandokan held Yanez’s head against him to pass the wet rag over that sweaty nape. To hide his concern, he kissed his brother on the top of the head. “Your only concern right now should be to get strong enough to leave this bed…”

Yanez didn’t find the words reassuring. Being next to Sandokan —with his brother’s powerful leg over his own hip, enjoying the coolness on his skin—lulled him into the familiar and sheltered feeling he had enjoyed for years.

It wasn’t long before he fell asleep with the assurance they both can overcome everything.

* * *

The day had been hot and without a breeze, but Marianna let out a sigh at the beautiful sunset. She wiped some scatter strands of hair from her clammy forehead. The beautiful sunset was a thousand time more enjoyable while pairing with the sense of freedom Batavia gave her. Since she met Sandokan, her world became wider and bigger. Her hands stopped fidgeting with the fabrics and turned her head to the sun. The forest birds cried. Marianna tasted the smell of wildflowers. The little tigers were roasting fish over hot coals.

She gathered her things and put them in a safe place. The last meal of the day will soon be ready. it has been hours since Sandokan entered the small house, he had lost track of time again. She pushed the heavy door and. The heavy odor of hot flesh and male sweat assaulted her nose before she could notice the two men lying down on the bed.

The light was dim, but she could notice all the details. Yanez’s right arm was over his head, by Sandokan’s headpiece, and his left hand inside her husband’s shirt. That was the first thing she noticed. Sandokan’s hand was cradling Yanez’s head. His arm over his friend’s folded arm, his fingertips poking from the Portuguese’s wet ringlets. Sandokan’s face rested on Yanez’s naked chest, nuzzling the fine dark hair between Yanez’s nipples. Sandokan’s hand was guarding the wound; his shirt fast with sweat to his muscular back. Sandokan’s wide sash had become undone. Marianna saw their intertwined legs.

Her shocked gasp roused Sandokan. Years of piracy had made him a light sleeper. His eyes fell on his wife. Those eyes were clear and serene. His face didn’t show any sign of unease at being found in such a compromised position. His lips parted and he awarded his wife with the pleased, blissful smile that always displayed his happiness. Without any hurry, Sandokan disentangled himself from the close hug, dipped the rag for the last time, and placed it on his friend’s brow. Then he picked up his headdress and put it in its right place.

After he dispensed those last cares, he extended his arms and attempted to hug Mariana. Marianna took a step back, horrified at the irrational notion of sharing the warmth they both accrued during their nap. She muttered something about dinner and turned her back to escape the room. She felt the dark mood brewing in her chest. She needed time to sort the feelings that overcame her.

By the time she reached the steps, Marianna noticed Sandokan didn’t follow her. That fact scared her and worried her in a measure she hasn’t felt before.

* * *

They both sat on the veranda, empty dishes in front of them after a light dinner of fish. For the first time, there was an unpleasant silence between them. Sandokan sat by the rail, on a big cushion. His wide sash covering his powerful knees. Marianna had heard his explanation about the change, but at the moment she couldn’t remember the importance. She was forgetting details and the fact made her even more uneasy. She watched him light up his hookah and tasted a couple of puffs of smoke.

Without a word, Marianna went to his side and sat beside her husband. With a sight, she rested her weight on his formidable shoulder and look at him. Sandokan’s eyes were wet; it was the same look of a puppy that can’t understand why he was being kicked out.

“You refused me, my Pearl.” If the sound of his voice was something to go by, Sandokan was not complaining. He was stating a fact. “This was the first time.”

“Can you blame me?”

“You found me sleeping by Yanez’s side, that’s hardly outrageous. Why did it bother you?”

“I have been thinking about it,” Mariana turned her eyes to the vast field in front of the house. “I was jealous. I'm appalled.”

Sandokan waited, his lips were around the mouthpiece but he didn’t drag on it. Marianna felt his eyes on her and there was a distinct quality of discontent on the weight of his gaze.

“Shouldn’t I be bitter if I found my husband in other man’s arms?” Marianna questioned without thinking so much about the meaning. “Were the soldiers right? You and he used to be like husband and wife?”

Sandokan scoffed at the idea and took a long drag on of the cold, sticky smoke with his eyes closed. He didn’t utter a word.

“Is this how much your promise worth, Sandokan?” Marianna asked, incensed by his silence. “Your love only last a month before you award your caresses and your love to someone else?”

“Marianna, you are insulting me.”

“Why?” She insisted, her hand clutching the fine cotton of his shirt; she felt the uncontrollable urge to dig her fingers in his flesh. “Is it because I doubt your word or because of what I’m hinting at?”

“There is nothing shameful in what you hesitate to name, my Pearl.” Sandokan smiled a bit, took her hand and rose from the cushion.

Marianna followed his movement. Soon they were taking the steps toward the field, away from the house.

“I have not broken my promise to you. You are still the center of my life and the force that makes my heart beat,” Sandokan broke the silence. His voice was deep but fretful as it carried his reasons, “but I have loved my brother for ten years and more. I ask you again, my Pearl, what are you resentful of? And what can I do to make you happy again?”

Having voiced her fears, Mariana puzzled and disarmed. She had expressed her fears in the most categorical manner. She had laid her problem at the feet of her husband and he didn’t find the situation troublesome.

“Why don't you deny it?” She asked, at last, trying hard to stifle a sob.

“What is it to deny? Marianna, I don’t understand your grief.”

“You love Yanez…”

“I can’t deny the feeling, and I don’t understand why I should deny it.”

“Because you profess to love me!”

Sandokan sighed. “And I suppose we are not allowed to love both mother and father. You must love one over the other…”

Marianna tried to speak but Sandokan didn’t allow her a space to interpose an argument.

“Allah forbids you to have a sibling because you couldn’t love them since you already love one of your parents!”

“You are mocking me.”

“Far from it, my Pearl, but your reasoning is absurd if it precludes me from loving you and loving Yanez at the same time.”

“Do you love him?”

“I repeat I do, and I’m proud of loving my brother. Why shouldn’t I? I’m still waiting for an answer.”

“I’m your wife!”

“And he’s my brother.”

“You don’t touch him like a brother!”

Sandokan’s face grew darker as soon as those words tumbled from her mouth. His words sounded incredulous when he spoke again. “English people don’t touch their siblings tenderly?”

The sudden realization of her ignorance hit Marianna. She didn’t know at all how English people behave around their siblings. She was the only child of a couple of ill-fated lovers and she had never experienced what it was to share the love with someone else. The frustration inside her was overwhelming.

“Tell me he doesn’t mean to you the same I mean!” Marianna demanded among distressed sobs. She finally recognized Sandokan was not eager to ease her pain. “Tell me you love me more!”

Sandokan countenance displayed his confusion for a moment. Regret was evident because it was never was his intention to make his wife cry. He wrapped his arms around her before carrying her in his strong arms. Marianna let him do. She was crying out of sheer vexation, unable to explain her feelings and impotent to demand satisfaction against Sandokan’s impenetrable logic.

He let her cry as he carried her to the place that was her and hers alone: the Chinese gazebo the little tigers build just for their queen. It was bare, but it was secluded and seemed like a good place to have a quiet conversation.

Marianna felt Sandokan go down in one knee and his arms around her body. He rested their combined weight on the hardwood, using his own body to shelter her from the toughness. She was facing his wide chest and the position reminded her of Sandokan and Yanez’s bodies so closely hugged. That image renewed her cries.

Sandokan let her cry her share. When all her tears were spent, he started to speak, aiming to explain himself to the best of his capacity.

“Allah, the most merciful, sent Yanez to me when I was lost, my Pearl. He came when I was struggling with the enemy inside and the enemy outside. It was Allah’s will that I find all His creations delicious to my senses and I was feeling rather weak...”

Marianna sniffled and buried her face in Sandokan’s shirt. Her husband prayed that she heard each word from his lips because it was harder than he suspected it will be.

“Yanez was the only survivors of one of my raids. The only survivor of his skin I have ever left alive…”

“Why he and no others?”

“Because he attacked me and left a wound.”

Mariana raised her eyes to his face in silent interrogation.

“He kissed me, Marianna,” Sandokan confessed without any blush. “His were the first pair of lips I have tasted in my life.” He felt Marianna’s movement against his chest. “Does it upset you, my Pearl?”

“I wouldn’t have ever imagined that was a reason to let him live. If anything, I would have assumed that action would have the opposite effect…”

“I was struggling then. I struggle no more. Allah blessed me with the capacity to desire both women and men. Yanez came to help me understand…”

“Have you ever…?” Marianna couldn’t find a way to express her worst fear. In awe, she discovered she lacked the words to name what she and Sandokan do in the name of her mutual love.

“No, I haven’t,” Sandokan sighed, “but there is no virtue in that fact since it wasn’t my choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s because you don’t know Yanez. You’ll learn soon when he gets better.”

“What’s so special about him anyway?” Mariana asked, feeling her frustration rising.

Sandokan shut his eyes and hugged Marianna closer. By the depth of his scowl, he was struggling to find a way to explain.

“Yanez can love men and women too,” he started. The tone of his voice announced each word was carefully selected, “but his love is different. He has eyes and knows what beauty is. And he has a body and can spare a caress or receive one without any shame, but that’s the extent of his love. He has no greed or desire to own. When I asked to show him, he declined with a laugh.”

“I really don’t understand.”

“It took me some time to understand his mind.” He let out a short laugh. That sounded a little bitter to Marianna. “Sometimes I’m not sure I fathom it at all, but I’m sure that I’m the only person who had figured Yanez out.”

“So, you never…?”

Sandokan made an exasperated sound. After so many years next to Yanez, he found his wife’s obsession with carnal commerce a bit irking.

“We have kissed. We have laid our weight in the same hammock. we have caressed each other’s hair. And we have hugged so tightly that we have almost forgotten where one begins and where the other ends…” They have done other intimate things. All them innocent, but Sandokan was reluctant to share more with his wife. Those moments belong to his brother too. “There had been always a layer of fabric between us. That had been always enough for him, and there are days when that’s enough for me too. In Yanez, I don’t have a lover, Marianna. I have a brother!”

“That’s all incomprehensible…”

“I know that feeling well…” Another deep sigh heaved Sandokan’s chest. “I have never done anything indecorous with Yanez; can you believe that, at the very least?”

Marianna sobbed. she wanted to believe his words but her mind refused to let go the image of both of them hugging in that bed.

“He’s a man…”

“He’s my brother,” Sandokan retorted and hugged her again.

“But you love him.”

“I love you too,” Sandokan kissed her forehead, “my heart is big enough to love you both.”

“I don’t want to share you…”

“I wouldn’t like to share you either,” Sandokan confessed. His voice was heavy and sad. “But if I were to make an exception, it will be for someone like Yanez,” after a small pause he added, “or our own child. In any case, both would be _mahram_ …”

“ _Mahram?_ ”

“People with whom carnal desire is forbidden,” Sandokan rocked her wife. “Never doubt of my love, Marianna. I love you more than I love the sea and my devotion to you is stronger than that I felt for vengeance.”

“But no more than your love for Yanez.”

“My Pearl,” Sandokan sighed again. “I wish I could tear my heart from my chest and show you how different are those two loves. He’s my friend, my brother, the closest person I could call family. You, my Pearl, I couldn’t keep breathing without you. I desire you. I need you. I would kill whoever dared to look at you in lust…”

“Sandokan,” Marianna interrupted him before he could keep spinning his web. When her husband wishes to utter a speech he could be long-winded. Marianna loved to hear him talk, but they have important issues to clarify. “Answer briefly, please.”

Sandokan nodded and waited. In the deep jungle, the cry of a wounded prey resounded but none of them paid it any attention. They knew theirs was a battle of wills.

“You really believe your words?”

“Yes.”

“And you love me more than you love him.”

“No, because it is not the same kind of love.” Sandokan, dismayed, cast an outraged stare at his wife.

“Why not? It’s evident! You can’t breathe without me! One of two has to be superior to the other!”

Sandokan grunted his annoyance. “No person is the same as another person; no love could be comparable to other love!”

Marianna spat one of those words she learned from English sailors and disentangled herself from her husband’s arms. Sandokan offered no resistance and, after a deep sigh, he rose from his place and climbed down the steps.

“My brother needs me more than you do right now.” Sandokan’s voice was not even indignant. “I’ll let you be, Marianna before I upset you even more.”

“You can’t upset me more…” Marianna said as she felt a new wave of tears approaching. “You are choosing him over me!”

Sandokan lifted his hands and formed a couple of fists, his neck extended and he turned his head to the skies. Marianna understood for the first time why he was so feared in the Southern China sea.

At the end of his rope, he barked the words: “He’s unwell and he hurt himself trying to pour himself a glass of water. He needs me, and if you think I’ll keep chasing your outlandish chimeras instead of assisting him, you don’t know me!”

Those words were a sobering thought. Marianna couldn’t resist offering a stone-cold face to the comment. Sandokan’s flaming eyes dared her to utter another word, she offered none. Then, in silence, he retreated to the little house.

* * *

“I’m tired of these walls!” Yanez’s voice could be heard in the whole plantation. “I need air and sun! By Bacchus, I’m not a prisoner, Little Brother! ”

Marianna was giving Sambigliong instructions. They both turned their heads toward the house, waiting for a matching explosion from Sandokan’s side, but the house remained quiet.

“Devil of a Portuguese…” Sambigliong laughed. “I doubt that the captain is able to confront him after the night they spent!”

With a sigh, Marianna curbed the need to correct the man. There had been four nights her husband spent by his friend’s side. Last night Yanez fever broke amidst night terrors and no one in the plantation was able to ignore their plight. Four nights since their fight…

“As you wish, you stubborn mooncalf!” Sandokan’s voice boomed without any warning. “Let us take you out so you can catch your own death!”

Marianna felt how the samples fell from her hands out of astonishment. Yanez had found the end of Sandokan’s patience.

“I can catch my death right here if you keep crushing my ribs!”

“Don’t tempt me!”

Sambigliong picked up the samples and put them on Marianna’s hand. The poor man was confused because his captains used to argue out loud day in and day out. If anything, Sambigliong regarded those loud voices as a good sign.

Stuttering, Marianna commanded Sambigliong to get some yards of different patterns. She turned around in time to see how Sandokan was helping Yanez outside the little house.

Any careful observer would have noticed that Sandokan was carrying most of Yanez’s weight. Yanez’s trousers hung low on his hips and his feet were bare. Marianna felt a sudden pang of remorse while witnessing the effects the lesion has left on him.

“Ah! Fresh air!” The Portuguese took a deep breath and grimaced when he pulled his half-healed injury.

“I can see you craved to have your wound disturbed…”

“Don’t spoil it, Little Brother. I’m out of that bed as you wanted. Now, how about helping me into that hammock?”

Sandokan raised his head in alarm and his eyes locked with Marianna’s. The words he spoke were for her and not for his brother.

“That’s Marianna’s and you better keep yourself from what’s hers,” Sandokan took another step into the veranda.

“Ah, we better don’t disturb the nuptial thalamus…” Yanez said, ironic as always, and shrugged. “Can I have the steps?”

“You can have my cushion, and my hookah, if you please.” Sandokan guided the convalescent man toward the big, threadbare cushion. “What’s mine is yours.”

“Well… thank you!” Yanez cast a wary look on Sandokan before letting his weight slid to the cushion. “I have my cigarette case with me and that’s enough.”

“I’ll go and hunt dinner… that’s it if you think you can manage to not pass away in my absence.”

“I’ll wait for you before I breathe my last,” Yanez promised and reclined in a more comfortable position. “But I warn you, Little Brother, if you don’t return with a babirusa I’m going to eat you.”

“You wish!”

Yanez laughed and pulled out his cigarette case. “Little Brother, we both know the truth.”

“That you are a Portuguese adventurer too cocky for your own good?” Sandokan laughed, knelt and pressed his forehead to Yanez’s. “I’ll bring you a babirusa, brother.”

“You better bring two,” Yanez looked into Sandokan’s eyes. “In case the wife doesn’t want to share mine.”

“No.” Sandokan picked up Yanez’s carbine without asking for his brother’s permission. He climbed down the steps and his eyes fell on Marianna’s who was climbing up in search for shadow. “Learn to share!”

Marianna couldn’t help but feel alluded, but she didn’t make a reply nor wished her husband good luck.

In the veranda, the Portuguese were smiling to one of the women —Siti Bao, Marianna recalled almost instantaneously— and asking her with good nature about her kids. She replied with a smile in her own language as she poured him a cup of aromatic jasmine tea. Yanez signaled as if he was referring to the high of something. She laughed aloud and carefree. Her bosom under the flimsy fabric jiggled but the Portuguese never took his eyes from her face. Yanez was smiling weakly at the good outcome of his wisecrack.

Siti Bao looked so comfortable next to the pirate as if he were not one of the most dreaded men in the Southern Seas.

Observing the people around her was a second nature for Marianna. When his uncle gave up his pirate hunts, Marianna started to notice the other women reactions as she learned from looking at men in the ships. Yanez was not a threat for that woman. In ordinary circumstances, she would consider him harmless, but she was not as naïve as she was four days ago.

That man was a menace. No one can convince her otherwise.

Siti Bao handed T an old mandolin hat human threat left him to rest. he even lifted his cup in Marianna’s direction before sipping his tea. Marianna didn’t fall for his charm and sat in the steps with her embroidery. trying to numb the need to make polite small talk with the man was exhausting.

“It seems that I have become an inconvenience in your house, Little Sister.”

Marianna didn’t reply, but she stole a glance on the man. The Portuguese sat with his back to her way. The small depression in his back, left by the piercing bullet, reddened and swollen, was mostly healed.

“You should forgive my Little Brother.” He plucked some notes and made a small pout. The keys were in need of tightening. “You’ll live happier that way.”

“Who told you…” Marianna dithered in calling her husband by that familiar name, “Sandokan needs to be forgiven?”

“I read him like a book.” Yanez plucked the strings and made some adjustments. “He’s miserable, his face sours when he looks at you, and yet he’s extremely accommodating to my antics.”

“It doesn’t look like that.”

“Oh, but he has been tolerant beyond measure. Take my word.”

“And what are the conclusions you draw from that behavior?”

“You two had a fight. The issue was yours truly. Sandokan is afraid you will ask me to go away. By your snubbing countenance, I assume you are pondering it as a solution.” Yanez summarized with his most ironic tone. “With deep regret, I must inform you that it won’t work.”

“You sound pretty convinced of that.”

“He loves me. Chase me away and he will resent you.”

“I gave you my word: This is your home, as long as you want it to be.”

“How long do you reckon I could call the place where my brother suffers my home?”

Marianna kept her silence, a bit infuriated because these two men had it all figured out.

“Marianna, I don’t want your husband.”

The light notes of the mandolin filled the silence. Yanez had said his piece and the world could keep turning for all he cares.

“Do you plan to get a wife?” Marianna asked and abandoned the pretense of working in her embroidery.

“Not in my plans, but I won’t deprive myself the pleasure if the right person comes my way.”

“And, would be the right person a woman?”

Yanez laughed and placed the mandolin over his knees. “To fulfill my requirements, you don’t need a cunt.”

“Are those the manners of a European man?”

“Are those the questions of an English lady?”

Marianna gasped at the riposte. The viciousness of the attack almost made her leave the place in outraged silence. Her military upbringing warned her to not vacate the place. That would be a mistake that could cost her the battle.

“Marianna,” Yanez called out with a soft voice and turned to face her. “I know it’s too much to chew for someone who recently escaped the clutches of the Empire…”

“I didn’t escape the Empire, I abandoned my only family!”

“Well, I’ll be your Virgil as you escape from it, Dante.”

Marinna felt the powerful need to award the witticism with a caustic reply. The sadness on those blue-gray eyes stopped her. That man was hurting and her training forbade her to twist the knife into an open wound.

“More than a decade ago, I was where you are now: stranded in the Southern Seas, without a family and, to cap it all, without the faintest idea of the language.” Yanez murmured and his chest heaved a deep sigh. “Your happiness is in your hands, not mine. Sandokan will make his promise true. This land would be a paradise for you if you dare to release the ballasts and let the wind blow.”

“I don’t want to share him with you.” Marianna was a bit surprised by her bold straightforwardness.

Yanez laughed out loud until his wound hurt, despite Marianna’s incensed look.

Siti Bao returned to the veranda in a hurry. She was there as soon as Yanez stopped laughing with his hand on his belly. That loyalty would be more appreciated if it weren’t followed by the scolding look of the Malay mothers. Marianna refused to lower her gaze, for she was not the Portuguese’s mother.

After a couple of fragrant cups of tea, Marianna asked Yanez: “What’s so amusing?”

“I find charming and hilarious that you believe Sandokan is yours to share,” Yanez mumbled and laughing with more restraint. Marianna began to wonder if Siti Bao laced his tea with opium to help him endure his pain. “The rain and the sea don’t belong to you, Little Sister!”

“Sandokan is a man.”

Yanez became sober right away. “Don’t insult my brother, Marianna.”

“In any case, he’s my husband.”

“Toss that ballast overboard before you hurt yourself.” Yanez picked up his mandolin and idly ran his fingers over the strings.

“I beg your pardon?” Marianna hated how prissy her voice sound at the end of the question.

“A wife here is not a wife on England. Your worth is not tied to Sandokan’s.” Yanez made a pause and played some chords. He was giving her time to let his lesson sink. “The title and privileges that label entails are yours. But his mind, his spirit, and his love are his to dispense as he sees fit. And the Little Tigers don’t care a bit if he loves you: they’ll judge you for your own actions, not for his name.”

“You are not making any sense.”

“I’m talking politics, not politeness, Miss Marianna.” Yanez bowed his head and plucked a lively strumming pattern on his mandolin. “And you might want to pick up your embroidery from the steps. Rain is coming.”

Marianna knew he was right; a powerful gust of hot air stirred the oppressive heat. The women rushed to retrieve baskets and fabric and to carry them to safety. Dust raised and the wall of clouds approached. Marianna took her things and put them in a safe place, but returned to rest her weight on the rail.

The smell of rain approaching was intoxicating and the wind against her skin cocooned in pressure. Yanez was toying capriciously with the strings of his mandolin. The music was lively and quick, so different from the other music Marianna had heard from his countrymen. With closed eyes, she enjoyed the song and the drop of rain drumming on the high roof of the house.

The quietude was broken when a thunder struck in the jungle. Marianna —feeling the force of the strike running through her body— opened her eyes in time to see the sky alighted. There were no words in her mouth to explain it, but the feeling was intimate and she had only felt it between Sandokan’s arms.

Yanez had stopped his song and she turned her eyes to him. The Portuguese was shuddering and she conjectured if he had felt it too.

“Sandokan will be safe,” Yanez mumbled. His shaking fingers tried to play again, but the sound was a mournful fado. His lips were moving but he made no sound.

Marianna rested her weight on the rail again. Her mind ran on all the possibilities of his behavior but the rain dulled the edge of her conclusions. She refused to think on the issue anymore.

“Say, Yanez de Gomera…” Marianna started once he stopped playing the instrument. “Would you be able to love me like you love Sandokan someday?”

“Of course not!” Yanez raised his eyes to the young woman resting on the rail and awarded her an ironic smile. “I don’t love in Sandokan the same things I love in you.”

“So, do you love me?”

“I have loved you from the moment you loved my brother back.” Yanez plucked the strings one last time and nodded satisfied. “I’m pretty happy he has found the kind of affection he wanted for so long and I don’t mind a bit if he’s devoted to another person.”

“How come knowing that doesn’t drive you mad?”

“It used to bother me.” Yanez laid his old mandolin in the veranda. “Now, I know I’m his family and neither you nor a whole blush of kids can take that from me.”

“Are you sure there will be kids, then?”

“If there is none, it will not be for lack of dedication.”

Marianna blushed and let her body slid to the hardwood in the veranda. Her hands were protecting her crotch without noticing how much that simple action reinforced his argument. Yanez sniggered and take out his first cigarette since that battle against the Dutch patrol ship.

“You are terrible!” Marianna reproached as he lights up a match with his thumbnail.

“I’m looking forward to filling the spot of the doting uncle,” was Yanez only comment before he rested his weight on the cushion.

“Tired?” Marianna asked and moved another cushion towards him. Sandokan’s one would not be enough for his tall frame. “Here.”

“Healing is harder than a raid.” Yanez took out his cigarette from his mouth. He blew out a plume of smoke and, obediently, split his weight between the two cushions. “I’m ready to bet it’s also more gruesome.”

“Sleep, then,” Marianna said and sat by his side. “You heard Sandokan…”

Yanez cast a suspicious eye on her and took another drag of his cigarette. Finally, he shrugged, finished to smoke and allow the rain to lull him into sleep.

Marianna made no comment, but sat by the door jamb and fixed her eyes on the half-finished structure of the new house. Her mind refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing on her part. It was obvious she needed to strike a truce while she found her footing.

One thing was sure in her mind, though, she was planning to spend the rest of her days in the house at the other side of the plantation. She needed to find a way.

**Author's Note:**

> ...just because it shines on someone else


End file.
